Life in black and gold, without inching forward… Without stepping back, we have arrived at a place called clay where sun wrings water from our bones, I am an owl following vapour… Shall there be any further questions? Tell her that she’s mad, that she eats from the palm of a mitre ten sewing machine failure who wants fornothing but relief… TV relief, and business that wreaks of gunpowder. Have it your own way if you wish, make promises to an open sky, flake skin onto burnt earth, trace polyester to it’s owner, it’s maker… But nothing, but nothing, but nothing holds me down any more… How shallow these seas have been for so long, how awful have been the words to come from my swollen mouth, how rigour overcame justice and made plastic from blood… No more, we are alive and that is all, like mangled plants on sand all digging digging digging!… How falling felt like flying, as long as it looked like glass we cheered each other on, we made toast in broken kettle drums, fire with petrol from bottles from pumps from pipes from people, from people… Still, the classroom has it’s echoes and our teacher sits quietly on the fence, swallowing phosphate fist by fist.

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So… While silver coats our dreams and they are valid who are we to hold back? It wasn’t long ago they ran and ran and ran, chased by ice and bordered by an empty stomach…Flies have more than we, and hope? Hah! Trickling down your leg I know you can feel, it is warm and smooth and thick and good, attest to that, for we miss it. How long ago since we walked together? How long since someone held up a hand and claimed to play? You knew the rules and let it slide, just one more pop pop pop don’t let it stop… King charm wrinkled in our tarmac-coated universe chomping on letters and numbers and chemical bewilderment, flagging down each truck that passes and curiously inspecting all the elephant experiments inside… Life in a box with a torch and a battery and the crushing sound of mother reading t-shirt photo iThink machine.

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Life in black and gold, a finger on the road and werewolves shouting swear words at the whole lot, frozen fish making menace in blue and white and red… Still up and up we go propelled and it is some horizon that grows close… I for one am excited, disgusted, embarrassed, amazed, appalled and confused… Nothing next to that sand we wear each day though. So eat and move and flake and choose and splay yourselves across the groin, across all that means anything worth meaning. I don’t think it matters in the end. This is the beautiful child we gave birth to! A shoulder rubbing rock jumping trigger in the sea dancing and kissing, and she will hold you all night long if you ask, there will be nothing demeaning for there is nothing left to demean… But I shall go to the forest where my drummer sits on an ivory stool hitting bone to bone, harder and greater and meaner than any concrete city judge can judge you can judge.